AOL, E-Mail Companies Sue Spammers

The nation's largest e-mail providers today filed a new round of lawsuits against Internet spammers allegedly responsible for shoveling millions of junk e-mail messages into computer users' in-boxes and their instant messaging screens.

America Online, EarthLink, Yahoo and Microsoft filed seven lawsuits under the federal Can-Spam Act, a law designed to restrict the spread of spam that took effect in January, as well as state spam and conspiracy laws. The cases mostly name unidentified "John Doe" defendants because the plaintiffs do not know who sent the spam.

AOL filed two cases against John Does in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. One of the lawsuits targets spam delivered through instant messaging services, a rapidly growing trend known as "spim." The other is against a spammer accused of sending advertisements for Vicodin and other prescription-based drugs. The company wants a judge to order a stop to the spam and award damages in the "millions of dollars."

AOL said the cases are based on more than 2 million complaints from customers in Canada and Europe.

The lawsuit was filed days after Virginia prosecutors began opening statements in a trial against a North Carolina man and two associates charged with violating Virginia's anti-spam law by sending millions of unsolicited messages to AOL users. Prosecutors said it is the first felony trial against alleged spammers.

Yahoo's case, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, accuses East Coast Exotics Entertainment Group Inc., and Epoth LLC of disguising their identities, designing e-mail messages to get around its spam filters and using non-sexually explicit subject lines to conceal sexually explicit e-mails.

Epoth does not send "any kind of direct marketing mail to anyone," said Steve Kupperman, the company's director of affiliate operations. He said Epoth operates several subscription-based adult Web sites and pays affiliates to direct viewers to those sites. East Coast Exotics, he said, is a defunct former affiliate.

If an affiliate uses spam, Epoth terminates its contract and refuses to pay for any services the affiliate provided, Kupperman said. He added that the company wants to work with Yahoo to resolve the matter.

Microsoft in three lawsuits filed at the federal court in Seattle accused defendants of violating the Can-Spam law by sending millions of e-mails advertising herbal growth supplements, mortgage services and get-rich-quick schemes.

"Spam is a very complex target. It involves fast-moving potential defendants, so communication is vital. If we see it on our network, chances are our colleagues are seeing it on their own networks," said Microsoft attorney Aaron Kornblum.

EarthLink filed one lawsuit against 50 spammers in the federal courthouse in Atlanta, accusing the defendants of hawking prescription drugs and low mortgage rates.

Can-Spam outlaws the practice of falsifying the "from" and "subject" lines of e-mail pitches. It also forbids advertisers from sending messages to people who choose not to receive them. Internet service providers can sue suspected violators, though the law does not grant the same privilege to individual e-mail users.

"This continued pressure is what we need to see in order to put these spammers out of business," said Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), the Can-Spam law's sponsor. "We need to keep this pressure up in order to get the message across to these guys that spamming is not only an annoyance... it's illegal."

AOL, Microsoft, EarthLink and Yahoo -- which formed an anti-spam alliance in March 2003 -- announced their first round of Can-Spam lawsuits in March. Those lawsuits were filed against dozens of mostly unidentified defendants accused of sending hundreds of millions of unsolicited messages to the companies' customers.

Internet service providers call Can-Spam a vital tool against unwanted junk e-mail, but some anti-spam activists question its effectiveness.

"The Can-Spam Act was asked for by the Internet service providers and gives them additional cause of action to sue spammers. This is what they thought would help them and they're making use of it," said Ray Everett Church, an attorney for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. "You can't sue enough spammers in private lawsuits to make a huge impact here. History has shown new spammers rise up to take their place very quickly."

Technology companies meanwhile are working on technological ways to cut down on spam by making e-mail message origins more easy to pin down. AOL this week said it would support a Microsoft proposal that would try to verify the authenticity of e-mail messages. The companies also are expected to attend a widely touted Federal Trade Commission "summit" on spam scheduled for next month.